Tag Archives: infertility

An article about how an unfeeling woman, married with children, basically taunted her during the seder about her being unmarried and childless. Underneath the article were two or three of her friends commenting about it, and how they have had similar experiences.

How terrible. In fact, it sounds awful. To be alone when you don’t want to be sounds really miserable.

And yet, there’s the part of me that says, “At least you can talk about! It’s not taboo!”

For every awkward conversation like that, there’s the guy on our trip who asked how long we’d been married, and then, at the end of the meal, gave us a blessing that we would be pregnant by the end of the year. It breaks my heart to think about it, mostly because he was so awesome about it. He figured it out, he gave the blessing to us in a way that was private, and he was compassionate.

No one wants that kind of compassion – it’s only somewhat easier than the total heartlessness of others.

I just have to keep remembering – my struggle is not “better” than theirs. It’s just different. We live in a community that values marriage and children, and that makes some people less careful than they should be – those who have gotten both things without trying. I’m sure that same woman would look at us and start trying to give advice rather than a sympathetic hand and a blessing.

Maybe the only difference is that their struggle is more open – their status is known. Ours is just inferred, suspected, whispered. Neither is nice.

My appointment went well. Our trip was crazy and then I got a sinus infection immediately following. I feel like I’m still digging out.

In any case, he thinks it’s mild PCOS more than anything else. He wants to do some more testing, and then we start with clomid, trigger shot and timed intercourse. Right now, everything’s on hold because his initial ultrasound also found a HUGE cyst on my left ovary. Yay.

Unfortunately, it looks like the CD3 labs might be delayed due to the holiday of Passover – I can’t get to the doctor on two days next week, and assuming my cycle isn’t totally crazy, I’m sure it’ll be on those days.

I haven’t been able to temp at all because of the sinus thing. Only in the last few days have I had my mouth closed when I wake up, so I think I ovulated, but I have no real idea when. We also didn’t get to do the deed as much as usual. So there’s that.

The desire for a baby is so strong tonight. UGGGGGGH. I hate this process more than a lot of things I have hated in my life.

So, my plan of putting two stressful things together has kind of worked.

My stress level is high, but I’m not feeling that sick sense of anxiety that makes me crazy. Rather, my head is buzzing like I have a beehive in there, and it’s not really letting me think.

Oy. But by tomorrow at about 6PM, it’ll all be done. Or really, I guess, 7PM. Once we’re in the air, for real, on our trip. We’ll have done the doctor’s office, gotten to the airport, gotten through security, and made it onto the plane by then. As long as we don’t end up as the next Malaysia air.

As for this cycle? Who knows. I’m probably going to end up being delayed in ovulation because of the stress of travelling. Although, it’s mostly about the time change – it’s a direct flight, so although it’s a 5 hour time difference (did I mention the potential job is in Europe?) I think the travel will be reasonable. And they’re paying for a car service for us to get to JFK so that won’t be too bad either.

My medical records are super interesting. I have to bring them tomorrow, so I have been pouring over them. I anticipate that I will need a few more blood tests and then I can see him moving into surgery. Granted, he may want to do everything over again, which since it’s been close to a year, I wouldn’t object. As long as we get the show on the road, honestly, I don’t mind what the heck we’ll do.

I’ll update when I can – it’ll depend on how much time I have at the airport and what kind of wifi access we have. Otherwise, see you on the flip side!

This happened today to me and I was so uncomfortable with it, but the more I think about it, it was probably the right thing to do.

Situation: my coworker and I, who I don’t know well (she’s in another department that I don’t work with much), happen to leave work at the same time and are going in the same direction, which means the same subway. I know she has two boys (5 and 3) and they sound really sweet. I bet she’s a good mom.

She and I strike up a conversation about the fact that the office is moving and that it’s probably going to be around the same time that she’s moving (they HAVE to abandon the city for the suburbs unless they can find a huge money pot – and at a certain point, most people just want space). So our family comes up, and she asks how long we’ve been married. The thing is, at this point, it’s six and a half years, and it starts to feel like no one is going to believe that we haven’t thought about kids at this point. So I said, six years, pointed out that we’d been young and DH is still in school, and we kind of moved on.

It’s just crazy, because it was like giving an answer from two years ago. That was the truth then – I was on birth control for that exact reason. So it was like the truth, but an old truth, not the current truth. I didn’t want to confide in her, I didn’t want to bring anything like that into the conversation. But I’m still a little uncomfortable about how that conversation went.

This stuff is so hard, and so personal, that I feel like I end up censoring myself a lot. This was maybe the first time that it’s come up in a while, so maybe I’m just out of practice. Either way, what a weird experience – in a little over a week, we’re going to the big fancy doctor to get this fertility thing on the road, and here I am, downplaying what it all means to me.

I hope you guys will forgive all the “moving forward” themed titles for my blog posts, but I feel so good about what I accomplished this week.

So, what’s the update?

Well, as you know, I found out about the Managed Infertility Program on Tuesday. On Wednesday, I actually talked to my case manager, who I will call A (hopefully for AMAZING, but we’ll see, right?). She and I had a nice conversation, although I was kind of on edge both because of the subject matter and because of the fact that I was borrowing a colleagues office to take the call (I am in a cube…sigh.)

So – information so far. This insurance is likely to be better than my previous insurance in terms of out-of-pocket cost. We have a high deductible plan, but my work pays for 80% of the deductible, so that’s great – it’ll be about $600 out of pocket for us (outside of our regular contribution to the plan which is less than what we were paying before). After that it’s 90/10% coinsurance, which means we pay 10% of the negotiated rate of the insurance, up to another interval amount (which work doesn’t help with, so that’ll be a little more painful), and then after that it’s 100% covered.

Unlike my old insurance, they will cover treatment up through IUI. So that means, as many IUIs as they think necessary (so it requires their approval…) but no IVF stuff. It’s possible that they would cover IVF drugs, but I have to find out from the pharmacy people, since A doesn’t deal with that stuff.

Bottom line: it will still cost us money, but likely less than what we would have paid with the other plan, and the coverage lasts for longer.

She also gave us information on their “Centers of Excellence,” which as far as I can tell mean the largest clinics in NYC. One of them is close by work, but the reviews are consistently terrible, and their SART data is worse than the clinic I want to go to (29% v. 36% live births for my age group). There are other, very well regarded clinics in the program, but the transportation issues in NYC are very real – I could spend an hour or more each way, and I just don’t have time for that, at least at this point. My case manager did make a point of saying that I could get a second opinion at any point, with no hassle – like always, I’d just have to tell her that I have an appointment. So that makes me happy.

Of course, the only time-critical bit of this is that I’m likely to only keep this job until my husband graduates from school – so sometime after June 2015. Hopefully, I’ll be pregnant long before then!! Given all my progress, and my research into the other clinics, I did make an appointment at the facility I wanted – March 20 at 1:30PM. We’re leaving for a trip that day as well, which is also stressing me out, so I thought I would combine stressors, lol. We’ll see how well that works/if it just drives me completely crazy.

The receptionist over the phone was very nice – I just need to bring my medical records (which we requested to be sent to me from the other doctor), my insurance card and my ID. I’m also considering bringing a summary coversheet with all the information – not because I don’t trust him but because I want him to get the full picture, and I know how busy these doctors are. So we’ll see how that goes – if I decide to do it, and what information I decide to include, etc. I feel like it could be helpful, though. I’ll let you know what I come up with.

So – how’s that for stepping forward? 11 days until my appointment!

Oh, and one lat thing I wanted to leave you with – last night, my work had it’s spring fundraiser. I was kind of dreading having to be there, but I ended up having a good time. They presented an award to a volunteer, who is also helping with the capital campaign to renovate the building we just purchased, and he said this at the end of his speech.

When you’re dealing with a big project, as we are with this building project, I have always said: Do what you can and let God do the rest. We have to do our part, as best as we can, and then have faith.

Called the doctor I want, and was given a phone number for my insurance company.

Apparently, I have a managed infertility program through my insurance. Awesome. In one to two business days, I will get a call from a nurse, presumably to make sure that I am actually infertile (yup), and then go from there.

Okay, I can deal with this. It’s a little detour. And maybe something called managed infertility will make me feel less like I’m floating out alone.

Maybe not, but one can hope, right?

Edit: Description of the plan from a web search, because now I’m obsessing over it:

Managed Infertility
This program is a comprehensive risk-bearing solution that provides guidance from a nurse specialist, pre-certification for the individual/family, claims processing and peer-to-peer consultations. This solution is designed to help individuals navigate the complicated and often stressful aspects of infertility services. In addition to intensive specialized clinical case management and a Center of Excellence network, your organization can eliminate the volatility of infertility spend for predictable and stable premiums.

I don’t care how annoying. I mean, I do care, but I can’t keep using that as an excuse.

We emailed my old doctor and got the forms moving for getting all my records from them.

I emailed our insurance broker yesterday to say that I hadn’t gotten our new cards yet. She ordered another set of new ones for us, and reminded me that I could download temporary cards online, which I did and printed out.

I looked up the doctor’s office I want, and I think I picked a doctor — I’ve known for a while which office, but they have multiple doctors and I wasn’t clear which I wanted.

I am going out of the office later today, and I could snag five minutes to call when I have the relative anonymity of a coffee shop.

This has to move. I keep waiting for something – mostly, I think, for my body to work the way it’s supposed to. But it’s not. And everyone around me is getting pregnant, and although it’s not every time, some of them totally destroy me.

I don’t have time to be this upset about it – there are at least parts of this that I can change.

It’s hard, because life has been really emotionally exhausting lately, but I can’t keep letting that stop me. Sometimes, it’s a good check when things are really overwhelming, but it means that when I have the window, I have to go for it.

I wish this could all be normal. That it would have worked like it was supposed to and then we could have just continued on with life. But it hasn’t, so I have to keep moving. Or get moving.

Rather than letting the fact that this is two years since we started trying, and a relatively close friend who got married less than six months before we started trying is pregnant, stop me, I have to use it as motivation. Or I will be where I am, because there is nothing else happening here.